More Than 100 D.C.-Area Airport Workers Arrested

— -- Feds Arrest 104 D.C.-Area Airport Workers

April 23 — Federal investigators cracked down on airport workers today, charging nearly 100 with lying about their identities to get airport security clearances at two Washington, D.C.-area airports, and arresting another 10 at Baltimore-Washington International Airport.

"Federal officials completed the arrest of 94 employees at Dulles International Airport and Ronald Reagan [Washington National] Airport on charges of widespread fraud in obtaining restricted access airport security badges," Attorney General John Ashcroft said at an Alexandria, Va., news conference before the Maryland arrests.

The workers were accused of lying on security documents that gave them access to secure areas of the airports, and some were charged with Social Security fraud and various immigration violations, Ashcroft said.

Since Sept. 11, federal, state and local agencies have been running background checks of airport employees with access to secure areas of airports, netting hundreds of people with allegedly false documentation.

Including today's arrests, more than 350 people have been charged at 14 airports, according to the Department of Transportation's Office of the Inspector General. Of those, 105 have pleaded guilty or had plea agreements pending, and 73 have been deported or are awaiting deportation proceedings.

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The Washington-area operation is the most intense of the efforts so far, involving investigators from at least 11 different agencies who pored over the records of tens of thousands airport workers, Ashcroft said.

"What this investigation uncovered should be a wake-up call for every airport in America," the attorney general said. "Sixty-eight individuals employed at Dulles and 26 individuals employed at Reagan National have been arrested."

Ashcroft pointed out that Dulles was one of the airports where Sept. 11 hijackers boarded planes that were crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.